Stasi trots out the usual tricks in this provocative but often clunky thriller that spotlights an evil conspiracy and a...
Media talking head and newspaper columnist Stasi pens a conspiracy thriller that chases the legend of a terrorist who might be more than he seems.
Overly plucky reporter Alessandra “Ali” Russo, a newspaper columnist like the author, happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when an accused international terrorist is brought to trial at the United Nations. Demiel ben Yusef stands accused by the International Court of Justice of causing the deaths of thousands in terrorist incidents aimed at religions across the globe. When Yusef, a prisoner under enormous security, improbably manages to stop and plant a kiss directly on the reporter’s mouth in full view of the world’s press, she’s stunned. Ali doesn’t know Yusef; she only knows that his trial is a three-ring circus, and covering it is the biggest story of her career. When she turns in a column that falls short of what her editor expects, she’s unceremoniously fired. Returning home, she finds her apartment ransacked and relies on an odd assortment of old and new friends to help her puzzle through the who, what and why of what is happening to her. Although the snooze-worthy courtroom opening falls flat with a silly and spectacularly dull trial, Stasi picks up the pace once she puts her heroine on the run in this familiar conspiracy-theory–centered novel, with its glib-talking, spunky protagonist, tackling of the controversial issue of cloning, religious persecution, international coverups and a bevy of priests, both as friendlies and heavies. Melodramatic in places, with a tendency to bog down in historical minutiae, the narrative takes a sometimes difficult-to-follow trip around the world, plunging Ali into intrigue, narrow escapes and a darkening plot that threatens both her life and the balance of world power.
Stasi trots out the usual tricks in this provocative but often clunky thriller that spotlights an evil conspiracy and a slightly past-her-prime reporter who chases a murky truth through numerous time zones, leaving the bad guys scrambling to keep their nefarious plans intact.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3427-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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